However, this is not the case in professional basketball, soccer or even golf. In all three cases, the men's leagues far outperform the women's in terms of getting revenue from the marketplace...and the commensurate salaries / prize purses reflect this. The US Womens Soccer team made a big deal about this recently, but when you look at the income produced by the men in professional leagues vs. women's leagues, there are stark differences.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/606439/tennis-atp-and-wt...
2007 was also the first year that Wimbledon (the last holdout of the four majors) paid the same to men and women victors.
It seems psychologically hard to regress from that benchmark, even if in recent years overall revenue has once again diverged.
And in non-majors, the pay disparity has returned, reflecting the differences in revenues:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/sports/tennis/equal-pay-g...
This is also the reason I think things like participation trophies are likely doing more harm than good. Life is and likely always will be competitive. And in competition it doesn't matter how hard you try - in the end the victory is decided by achievement alone. Stephen Hawking is not highly regarded because he's a scientist working against all odds, but simply because he's a phenomenal physicist. If he had been perfectly healthy, he would have still achieved great regard - though perhaps excepting the living Hollywood biopic. Ultimately his merit does not come with the subtext 'for somebody with such a condition' but unconditionally.